Esperanto

Johnson: Simple, logical and doomed

Chances are you don’t—speak Esperanto, that is. But a few readers of the last two columns—about the quandary of Europe’s multilingualism, and why enforcing English throughout Europe was a flawed idea—made the case for Esperanto. At a time when ever more countries need to communicate with one another, why shouldn’t Europe, or the world, embrace the simple international language invented by Ludwig Zamenhof in 1887?

Outsiders tend to scoff at Esperanto as an idealistic waste of time. Esperantists harrumph back: with somewhere between a few hundred thousand and possibly 2m learners, Esperanto is far and away world’s most successful invented language. If that sounds like “Finland’s biggest klezmer band”, it shouldn’t. Esperanto has outgrown quite a few rivals. Dreamers have been inventing languages for centuries, from Lojban (designed around predicate logic) to Ladaan (designed to espouse feminism). But languages like Klingon, Elvish, Dothraki, Navi’i and their kin, created for popular entertainment, are the only invented languages that can muster nearly the enthusiasm Esperanto does.

Esperanto remains atop the heap. The Esperanto Wikipedia has nearly 186,000 articles, more than Hindi or Hebrew, and some 87,000 users, far and away the most among invented languages. Esperanto-speakers gather offline in frequent conventions too, discussing the language’s prospects, making friends and falling in love. An Esperantists’ apartment-share service, Pasporta Servo, boasts over a thousand homes in 90 countries where Esperantists can stay with each other for free. The community’s cheery energy is depicted by Arika Okrent in her book “In the Land of Invented Languages". Esperantists’ pride is not totally without foundation.

One element behind Esperanto’s success is obviously its simplicity. Zamenhof designed it to spread. Roots come from the main European languages. Grammar is utterly regular. (Nouns end in –o, adjectives in –a, adverbs in –e. Plurals get a –j, and so on.) And Esperantists are keen to teach: sign up at Lernu and you will find not only free, decent-quality lessons but free tutoring from experienced speakers. There are few actual “native” speakers, perhaps around a thousand. Many have heard Esperanto since birth by idealistic parents, but Ms Okrent describes just one, Kim Henriksen, who speaks Esperanto as his dominant language.

With all this said—and having been warned by Ms Okrent that "there is nothing worse than being on the receiving end of an Esperanto proselytiser"—Johnson must confess his doubts. Esperanto will probably never become the world’s lingua franca. Why not? Well, one reason is simple: It hasn’t yet, in almost 130 years. Esperanto isn’t quite as old as The Economist, but it’s older than, say, Norway or Stanford University. Yet it remains thin on the ground.

This is partly because language, more than any other tool, benefits from network effects. The more people who speak a language, the more desirable that language will be. This is of course why Esperanto speakers play up the biggest possible numbers for their community—the hopes that others will join, for the benefit of being able to use Esperanto with more people.

But beyond sheer numbers, people learn a language in order to enjoy a living and real human culture. This holds Esperanto back. Google “famous Esperanto speakers” and you will find Wikipedia’s list. Many names are not exactly famous. But one jumps out: J.R.R. Tolkien. The novelist (and language inventor) apparently briefly dabbled in Esperanto. But he later wrote to a reader that

For “legends”, we might read more broadly “culture”. People may learn English or German or Chinese to get a job. But they also learn languages to experience travel, food, film, music and literature. Look at the cover of a language textbook and you’ll find an attractive person strolling down a stereotypically picturesque street from the country in question, or maybe a famous landmark. “That,” thinks the learner, “is what I want.”

What would that picture be for an Esperanto textbook? The community is proud of its respect for existing cultures. Esperanto is to be the world's first choice for a second language in order to protect diversity, not to replace it. So to be motivated to learn Esperanto, you have to be motivated not by a living and breathing culture, but by an ideal of international harmony. That ideal has to compete with French food, Italian fashion, Brazilian music, Spanish nightlife, American rock'n’roll, Japanese film, and so on.

Perhaps if a few gorgeous celebrities became fluent in Esperanto and required it for admission to their parties, Esperanto would pick up some cultural cachet. It would certainly be interesting if a country or territory ever made a serious effort to make Esperanto its language, as a tiny sliver of Belgium once nearly did. Until that (distant) day, living languages will reign supreme—and especially the living language that has lucked into Esperanto's desired role as the world’s most popular auxiliary: English. Those who cherish language diversity might prefer Johnson's previous suggestion of "English plus". This seems a better bet than the noble dream of Esperanto, which has never become reality, and probably never will.

Being able to speak with people around the world after only a few months of starting to learn any language isn't reason enough? Tackling Esperanto as the first language, would save lots of time in learning languages, and meanwhile, you can already use a learned language.

Of course all of the Esperanto speakers you met spoke English ... that is the kind of people you get together with. Around the world, most Esperanto speakers cannot have a conversation in English, even if some of them spent lots of time trying to learn English.

Useless? Yes. There are about 6000 languages that are useless for you. Languages are useful only to people who understand them.

I am an idealist and hobbyist ...

... for French, because to learn French I dedicated much more time than to learn Esperanto. I am capable to understand written French and a little spoken, but I cannot speak or write it.

Same for Portuguese.

Plenty of time for German, but I cannot understand it.

Much less for Esperanto, because I studied and learned the basics in two days. Of course I needed practice to get fluency.

A lot more idealist and hobbyist for English, because I dedicated almost my whole life to learn it. Yes, I wasn't born to learn languages, and my ears don't help any ... least the language be Esperanto. I had to learn English because I trans-located to USA. I learned Esperanto because it is much easier to learn and, outside English speaking countries, for me it is much useful.

And not much about idealism ... If Esperanto were as difficult to learn as English, very few idealists would have learned it.

You might have misunderstood me. I responded to the remark "I now understand Shakespeare because I learned Esperanto" is a ludicrous statement. I cannot imagine anything as ludicrous as that. It's like saying "I now understand Quantum Physics because I learned Esperanto". If such statements keep being uttered of Esperando, any thinking person will dismiss it as hogwash.
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Other than that, I see nothing wrong. It is useful, as you both say, for communication in a simple, linear conversations (Q: How much is a room? A: $175 per room per night, but 20% discount for Esperanto speakers. A: Great! Thanks! I'll take it. [conversation took place with both people speaking Esperando]). But other than that, it seems as useful as a plastic knife. And until it evolves to be inclusive of higher capabilities as a language, it will remain a toy car on the highway. That is all I meant. And considering the "higher capability" part, there are scores of languages already with infinitely higher capababilities that took some several millenia to earn their maturity. So. The more I think about this, the more Esperando strikes me as a gimmick. Someone invented a one-octave piano. Great. Playing it is an option. Not for Vladmir Horowitz, I am almost certain. Or go ask the living ones.

Esperanto is for idealists and hobbyists, that's all. If you are about to learn a foreign language, what reasons would you have to select Esperanto, other than those? I'd rather learn Spanish, Mandarin, Russian, Arabic, Hindi or Swahili, to mention a few obvious ones. But I would rather learn any minor language like Welsh Georgian before tackling Esperanto.

As for a language of international communication - well, I have met a few (not many, admittedly) Esperanto speakers. All, without exception, could speak at least some English.

Esperanto is useless, albeit it can no doubt be harmless fun for some.

R.L.G., The policy is reasonable (TE is an English paper)and the conditional exception allowance is reasonable (folks still need to be able to read what a non-English language is saying if it is used. Noone can learn a new language with the speed of spontaneous combustion. :)) Thanks.

With English becoming the world's international language I don't think there is much of a need to go out of our way to learn an invented language. Is Esperanto richer than the English Language? I don't think so. Waste of time and resources.

I'm not sure the need for a common language is so obvious as it sounds. I remember when we in the US were all supposed to switch to the metric system, the main argument being that everyone else is using it and if we want to manufacture stuff to sell to the rest of the world, we have to make it to metric standards. Aside from the auto industry, what happened instead was that computers took over machine tools, as well as most user interfaces. A CNC mill or lathe these days can cut a thread by using a single-point tool controlled by software, that can cut any pitch and diameter you want, metric or English. The other thing that happened was manufacturing moved to China and with the US market as large as it is, the Chinese were willing to make "metric" and "English" versions of those products where it actually still mattered, like certain tools. On the user end, a car speedometer needs a different dial to read in MPH versus KPH, but now that they're mostly digital, all it needs is a flag set in software to determine what units it reads in.

The bottom line is that computers eliminated once was once thought to be a pressing need for a single global system of measurement units. As software translation keeps getting better, it will also eliminate the pressing need for a common language. I suspect that eventually we'll converge towards some mutually-intelligible language (much to the dismay of linguists who will left with nothing to study but "dead languages") but the convergence will be more a matter of convenience and evolution than need.

This is a good article, but I disagree with the "doomed". Why "doomed"? The arguments are just profetic and kind of weak; sometimes they are even wrong if we observe the goals of the so called "Esperanto movement". "It does not have legends"?... It intends to mean that Esperanto does not have a culture, what is by itself an absurd. It does have a culture: not only an international one, with individual and colective works and manifestation, but a proper culture created by the use of the language and its history. But the conclusion is true: money is a predominant thing in this materialistically slave world, where just what has money involved could be successful - and just because of money English has been imposing itself, hasn't it? I liked to read this article, but the article itself is victim of its conclusion: the author wanted to become a prophet and say what will happen. Couldn't he or she just ask: will Esperanto - a day - become a stronger reality than in these days? - But I must say: the most common idea of the Esperanto community is not to make it a language of a nation, but the language usable to all the nations, not imposed, but chosen. I'm Brazilian, I'm young (30), I'm geologist and I do speak Esperanto.

So I was under the right impression: Esperanto is a language for the poor. A sort of ersatz 'English' or second-rate 'English', only that... while English has succeeded universally, Esperanto has failed. No offense intended, but it looks like a wannabe language. In your original language, "castellano": un quiero y no puedo.

You wrote,

1) "It is easier to express an idea in Esperanto than in any other language learned as a second language."

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Sorry, but that's a wrong and gratuitous assertion, something you can't possibly prove, among other reasons because you can't speak on other people's behalf.

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2) "Some poor people from poor countries are paying richer people from rich countries to learn their languages, so the rich people become richer and don't have to spend time and money to learn other languages."

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That's demagoguery and populism.

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As I said before, as a group of friends or coreligionists, I respect you and I wish you all the best. It's good that some people speak Esperanto, why not? It enriches culture, it doesn't impoverish it. But nothing else. Don't waste your time with me, you will NEVER sell me this product, idea, belief or whatever it is. Besides, I already speak four languages and read and/or understand a few more, and, as Hippocrates wrote:

These Esperanto
learning difficulties, are beginners complaints. Most users of Esperanto don't care about how they learned the language, they just use it. Those things aren't important. The result is that people start using Esperanto in a little fraction of the time required to do the same with other languages ... and English is not the easiest of them.
What you said in your last paragraph attests to the popularity of Interlingua.

And between Korea, China, Japan, Laos, Cambodia, Tibet, Nepal, Mongolia, etc., if all use Esperanto as a precursor to English training, they may all eventually adopt Esperanto as the lingua franca, as opposed to Japanese learning Mandarin for when they're in China, English for when they're in Korea, and so on.

The point is, since we've all chosen English as our lingua franca, if the use of Esperanto BEFORE English training ever becomes widespread (which it very well may, given its proven merits as a stepping stone to learn other languages), it is possible that non-anglophones will simply find that Esperanto is an easier universal language than English, at which point Esperanto will supplant English as the language that all countries learn, even to speak to people who are not anglophones themselves.

I have spoken Esperanto in Japan, Korea, China, and Vietnam. None of them complained about Esperanto. They were very glad they could speak with people from other countries using a language much easier than English.

Many of them spent plenty of time studying English in school, but still not being able to communicate using such difficult language.

To create a language that would serve everyone, one has to look at existing language and dialects: tonal and non-tonal; character-based, abugida, or alphabetic; and numerous variations in-between. You must look at morphology, syntax, phonology, and prosody. Just as an example - would the language distinguish between /r/ and /l/? How about /b/ and /p/? Would the glottal stop have individual phonetic meaning and be recognized in words as differing from other stops? Take a look at the International Phonological Alphabet to see the incredibly rich variation in human speech sounds. How many cases and declensions? How would you indicate masculine, feminine, and neuter? Singular, dual, plural?

I doubt we would ever see consensus, but it would be a wonderful exercise.

A good case could be made for teaching it as a second language in grade school; a test study in Ontario found that regular stream H.S. students given 3 yrs of Esperanto and 2 yrs of French instruction (in days when Ontario HS went to Gr 13) were superior in French to academic stream students given 5 yrs of French instruction. Learning Esperanto facilitates learning any other second language(s).